1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to building conditioning management systems and, more specifically, to a system and method for conditioning a building environment based on occupancy estimates.
2. Description of the Background Art
Most buildings today operate on schedules. For example, the building's heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system may turn on at six o'clock every weekday morning to an “occupied mode” (i.e., as if the building were fully occupied) and turn off at seven o'clock every weekday evening to an “unoccupied mode.” Rigid scheduling of the building conditioning management systems is problematic because during the occupied mode, the building is often less than fully occupied resulting in the inefficient use of energy and substantial unnecessary costs and during the unoccupied mode, many occupants may still be present due to shifting work hours, project deadlines, company events, etc.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method for more efficiently conditioning a building environment based on occupancy estimates. This would include tailoring the schedule based on real-time occupancy data or historical occupancy patterns and outputting the conditioning level based on the number of people in a given space.